


The Perils of a Human Girlfriend - Sleeping Arrangements

by Angelwingsl3 (Marie_Fanwriter)



Series: The Perils of a Human Girlfriend [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Budding Relationship, Crack, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, ME2, Pre-Relationship, but i love it, pre-sidonis, turian beds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24830992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_Fanwriter/pseuds/Angelwingsl3
Summary: Just a bit of a crack series to lighten the mood. Part 3!When Shepard can't sleep, what is she to do but head down to the crew deck to see her favourite turian. When she finds him, it's not what she expected.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: The Perils of a Human Girlfriend [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/796350
Comments: 16
Kudos: 62





	The Perils of a Human Girlfriend - Sleeping Arrangements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tumblr Anon](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Tumblr+Anon).



> It's been too long since I've written a chapter for Perils. This technically takes place before they're a couple, but it is a peril all the same. My headcanon on turian sleeping arrangements is enclosed!
> 
> Prompted by Anon on Tumblr, I hope you love it.
> 
> Thank you, [**Some_Writer**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Writer) for beta reading!

Sprawled out at the foot of her bed, Shepard gazed at the scant few inches of transparent material that separated her from the vacuum of space. To the casual onlooker, it might have appeared that she was stargazing through the skylight, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. While she could intrinsically appreciate the view, with billions of glittering stars twinkling beyond the waves of blue mass effect field, the sight terrified her. 

A small, self-deprecating chuckle fell from her lips. Before getting spaced, she’d have loved this.

Try as the Commander might, keeping her breathing deep and even was a struggle. One hand rested across her sternum, feeling each breath fill her lungs before she exhaled. The other twisted in the blankets. The knowledge that the glass was made of some kind of metallic or quartz alloy did nothing to quell her fears. 

A month into this sleeping arrangement and Shepard was no closer to being able to sleep through the night. To be honest, the best sleep she’d managed so far was after Omega when she’d fallen asleep at Garrus’ bedside when the Doctor finished his surgery. In the morning, her neck ached something fierce, but the dark creases beneath her eyes had faded.

Shepard jerked awake the moment she started to nod off. The panic returned, and her heart pounded against her ribs, making her feel sick.

“Fuck this,” she mumbled as she sat up. 

Rising, Shepard sighed. At least tomorrow-- she checked her omni-tool, noting it was 0300-- at least  _ today _ there were no missions to run. It was a travel day as they ran from the horrors on Horizon. Maybe that was why she couldn’t sleep; she mused while grabbing her N7 sweater from the couch and slipping it over her shoulders.

The fight left a bad taste in her mouth.

With bare feet and just a pair of shorts, Shepard headed for the elevator. No one would be up yet, and, if she was going to be functional, she needed caffeine.

She tapped her foot in the elevator while she waited for it to descend two levels to the mess hall. Why Cerberus could spring for reinforced viewports but not a faster lift was anyone’s guess. The doors slid open after two full minutes to an empty crew deck as expected. Sergeant Gardner would be up in an hour or so. It would give her more than enough time to boil the kettle and disappear back up to her desk before anyone saw her in this dishevelled state. 

Shepard’s fingers passed through her hair in an attempt to untangle the rat’s nest she’d made of it while tossing and turning for the first few hours of the evening. She could see herself in the shiny metal wall outside of the medical bay as she passed by, at least her hair wasn’t sticking out in ten different directions. She called it good enough.

A long, battle-worn sigh left her lungs as she stood in the kitchen, filling the kettle. Everything about this ship was wrong-- even the damn arrangement of the cabinets. She kept reaching into the one above the sink for mugs, only to find plates instead. It took a great deal of restraint to refrain from slamming the door shut.

Fuck, she didn’t even  _ like _ coffee. What the hell was she doing down here, anyway? 

Both of her hands ran through her hair and held her head. “Damn it.” The truth was simple-- she hated it up there; Despised the manipulative Cerberus bastards that gave her a luxurious cabin locked away from the rest of the ship like a damsel in a tower. The distance helped nothing. It only served to further isolate her from the alien-hating humans aboard the ship.

Looking around the empty room, Shepard tried to find some other excuse to be out of her cabin. There had to be something else she could do with her time.

Her scan stopped when she reached the main battery, and the lock was red. Shepard’s head tilted to the side, that was strange. 

Distraction found, Shepard shut off the kettle before it had a chance to boil and headed for the short staircase. “EDI, is Garrus awake?”

“Yes, Commander,” The AI’s voice filtered over the ship’s intercom. “Shall I inform him you are on your way?”

“Please,” she said.

By the time Shepard reached the battery, the lock had changed to a brilliant green. As such, she thought nothing of opening the door and stepping inside the warm and dimly lit room. A mere two paces inside, just far enough that the door shut behind her, she stopped in her tracks. An empty console greeted her instead of the familiar hulking form of her favourite turian.

She blinked. “Garrus?”

“Here, Shepard.” 

Turning toward his voice, she expected to see him bent over the crates in the corner or doing something else that made sense. Instead, she saw Garrus lazing in a hammock. An honest to god, hammock-- on a starship. Her brow knotted. Now, she’d seen everything.

“Something wrong?” he asked, tilting his head to the side and flaring his left mandible out. The expression was so normal on his face despite him looking so out of place. Garrus started sitting up, leaning his weight into an elbow. The hammock swayed with his movements.

She shook her head and took a step back, feeling like she was intruding. “No.”

When his mandibles pinched into his maxilla, she knew she’d done something wrong. Garrus swung out from under the blanket and hopped down. His long, athletic legs bent with the impact. Her eyes followed from his bare, digitigrade feet up the length of his legs, and, when he stood tall, Shepard quickly realized he was shirtless.

“Sure seems like something is,” he said. Whether it was conscious or not, Garrus turned his bad side away from her slightly-- just enough to hide the scars, peeking out from behind his bandages, in shadow.

Shepard shrugged before crossing her arms over her chest and purposefully looking away, she’d been caught staring. “Couldn’t sleep,” she mumbled.

His hum was familiar, a soothing sound against the backdrop of the new  _ Normandy’s _ wrongness. She could see him moving at the edge of her vision, he grabbed a hoodie from the crates and pulled it over his shoulders, leaving it unclasped for now as he crossed to the console to lean against it. At least that pose was familiar.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Shepard said into the ensuing silence. “Sorry.”

Garrus gave her a one-armed shrug. “Wasn’t exactly sleeping, EDI checked.”

“Oh,” she couldn’t stop the faint blush from coming to her cheeks. Garrus meant he was sleeping; she knew that. But there  _ was  _ a specific connotation to that phrase that she couldn’t ignore. Shepard rubbed her arms as if she was cold, despite the fact the main battery was warmer than the rest of the ship.

“I uh, didn’t think you’d be here so fast,” Garrus admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand while the other hung loosely at his side. “Would have gotten dressed.” He looked at her from head to toe. “At least I’m in good company.”

A tiny laugh fell into the air, and Garrus’ chuckle joined it.

“I suppose you are,” she told him. Looking back toward the hammock, Shepard let her curiosity get the better of her. She wandered across the deck, her bare feet making no sound, and plucked at the black material. “So, are you going to explain this?”

“What?”

Shepard gestured vaguely toward the offending piece of furniture and gave him a look as though to say  _ this, idiot. _ When he flared his mandible and shrugged at her, the Commander rolled her eyes and decided to take stock herself. The hammock was strung diagonally in the corner of the main battery at chest height. The black material was rigid under her fingers, but with enough give she could see it being comfortable. It wasn’t rough like one of those military fire blankets she’d used during basic, but not quite a set of silk sheets either.

“You didn’t drill into my ship, did you?” she asked while regarding the rigging mechanism. A circular panel rested flush with the wall on either side, almost like a suction cup. 

Shaking his head, Garrus walked over and demonstrated how it detached from the wall. There was a button on the ring. “It’s an electromagnet,” he explained without being patronizing. “Internal power source. So, unless the ship gets hit with an electromagnetic pulse, you won’t fall. 

She watched him reattach it with ease. At least that explained why Shepard had never seen it before. Exploring further up the hammock, she found there was a set of clasps that kept the blanket on. “And these?”

“Ah, those are to keep you in bed in the event of the ship losing inertial dampeners or artificial gravity.” He reached over her, stepping close to her back to demonstrate how the fasteners worked. “See?”

“Huh,” Shepard mused. “Next you’ll tell me there’s a slot to put your gun-”

Garrus’ laughter cut her off. He stepped past her to open a flap near the head of the hammock and revealed his sidearm. “There’s a knife slot, too, on the inside.”

“Let me guess, in case you need to cut your way out?”

He nodded, his grin spread his mandibles wide enough to make him wince. “Are we so predictable, Shepard?”

“On the weapons front, you bet.” She checked the integrity of the bed with a tug. The clasps didn’t give. “But as for the actual hammock. I’d never considered it.”

“Go on, then,” he said, tilting his head toward the object of her fascination. “It can hold me. It’ll hold you just fine.”

Shepard’s curiosity got the better of her. She tested it once more before pulling herself up and into the hammock. It was a long way up, and she almost had to hoist herself in. It wasn’t nearly as graceful as Garrus’ hop out of it, but she managed. She tested the sway before settling into the hammock on top of the covers. There was something surreal about it, the last time she’d been in one would have been her Elysium vacation-- not that she cared to remember those days with too much clarity.

The bed was warm, almost too warm. Garrus’ residual body heat was trapped in the blankets. It smelled like him. An almost cinnamon scent filled her nose, but there was an undercurrent of sleep sweat and musk too. She cleared her throat. “This isn’t so bad.”

“You get used to it,” he told her, still standing closeby. His hand rested on the hammock, stabilizing it as she bounced a little to test it out. “Where did you think I slept?”

Shepard’s brow knotted, and she turned to look at him again. They were close, closer than they’d usually be, so she had to look way up to see his face. Through her sweater, she could feel the heat pouring off him. “The bunks, I guess?”

“Mh-hm,” he hummed. The sound seemed to vibrate in the air at this distance. “Little short, to be honest. Plus, the Cerberus crew are a little wary still. Picked this up on the Citadel when we stopped in for Kasumi’s party.”

“I’m sorry,” she said honestly while sitting up and crossing her legs. Only now did she notice that her Sniper wasn’t wearing his visor. He looked younger without it but somehow more battle-weary in those vivid blue eyes of his. “I hadn’t even considered that.”

He waved her off and finally stepped further away. It felt like a weight coming off of her chest, but not in the right way. It was more akin to someone tearing off a warm heavy blanket rather than a relief.

“Garrus-” Shepard said as she reached out for him. Her hand caught in the air, unsure of what she was asking for as he turned to regard her. Standing stock-still, he waited for her to continue. The sight of him made her mouth go dry. In this dim lighting, the shadows played off his angles and scars. She swallowed.

“Ready to tell me why you’re here, Shepard?” he asked. The question was simply that, there was no accusation or ill intent. He sounded so genuine at this moment. Enough that she felt her eyes pinch with the sorrow she felt deep down in her bones.

Her gaze drifted to the floor, and her hands folded onto her lap. “Couldn’t sleep,” she repeated from earlier as though it were the whole truth. It wasn’t, not by miles.

“That all?”

At first, Shepard nodded, but then she stopped. She’d been lying to herself, and that was fine, but she couldn’t lie to him. Not after he’d dropped everything to come on this mission to help her, and sure as hell not after she’d disturbed him in the middle of the night to talk about turian sleeping arrangements.

He’d only just started opening up about Omega. Shepard didn’t want to ruin the fragile trust they’d managed to find again. She didn’t want to start again, so she pushed herself.

“No,” she admitted. “It’s not.”

“Talk me through it,” Garrus said as he stepped to the other end of the bed and gracefully swung himself into a seated position. How the hell he managed it without flipping the damn thing, Shepard would never know. But at her  _ whoa, _ he merely chuckled. “What, you didn’t think this could only hold one of us, did you?”

“Speaking from experience?” she teased. The hammock swung like a pendulum as they both got situated a little better. Garrus slung one leg outside of the hammock while the other bent in front of him. Shepard sat cross-legged facing him. It was indeed sturdy enough for two.

“Maybe.”

Shepard chuckled. He knew just how to pull her out of her head. That was Garrus’ specialty, even back on the  _ SR-1, _ after meetings with the Council or after Noveria.

“You haven’t seen the loft yet,” she hedged, and when Garrus nodded, she continued. “Come by some time. I’ve got a great view.”

“View?”

“Mh-hm.” She looked up at the solid ceiling above her; it was comforting at least. “There is a big damn window right above the bed.” Garrus was silent, and, when she managed to find his gaze again, his mandibles had gone lax against his jaw. “Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’.

“Assholes,” Garrus muttered. “We’ll install a metal plate when we hit Illium.”

Just as simple as that, Garrus accepted her discomfort and turned her world on its head. He didn’t question her trepidation or poke fun. Hell, she’d considered throwing a sheet up over it in a moment of pure rage, but to actually say he’d go through the effort to install a metal plate-- it made her feel-- well, she didn’t exactly know how she felt about it. So, for want of anything better to say, Shepard settled on: “Thank you.”

He shrugged her off, a small turian smile on his face. "Don't worry about it, Shepard."

So much of her wanted to reach out, to gather comfort from not just his words but the weight of his arms. Fear of breaking what they had stopped Shepard from acting on it. Garrus had never indicated any interest in humans, let alone her.

Clearing her throat, Shepard pushed the topic to something easier. Something that didn’t make her choke up. “So, you sleep in hammocks on Palaven too?”

“Just for temporary arrangements or when space is tight,” he told her. And he could see the question on her lips before she could ask for more of an explanation. “Regular beds aren’t like your flat human ones, though. They’re more bowl-shaped.”

A grin spread across Shepard’s face. “Like a nest?”

Garrus made an overblown sigh and rolled his eyes, almost like he’d heard all of the bird jokes before. “Yes, Shepard. Like a nest.” Perhaps he had, he did work at C-Sec for a while. 

Regardless, he continued explaining all about the differences in turian furnishings versus the human ones he’d seen to indulge Shepard’s curiosity. When she asked questions, he’d get more detailed or show her a holo from the extranet. In turn, she showed him some of the weird things humans had come up with-- like tire swings, Garrus got a kick out of those.

When Shepard nodded off, she'd never know. It was warm in the battery and so damn comfortable swaying gently in the dim-- definitely not starlight. Ever since the  _ SR-1, _ she'd slept on her own, but it was comforting to know she wasn't alone tonight.

How many hours passed, Shepard didn't know. But she woke up to the sound of the battery door opening. The light whooshing sound broke her from her slumber, and she sat up fast, making the hammock sway.

"Didn't mean to wake you," Garrus said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand as though he was embarrassed.

Shepard looked him over, from toes to fringe and saw he'd dressed in armour. How the hell he'd managed to do that without waking her was anyone's guess. "I uh…" she looked away, sheepish. "Didn't mean to fall asleep on you."

His mandible flicked outward, and he walked to her side to drop a small bag into her lap. "Brought you some fatigues," he said. "They were in the laundry room, waiting to be picked up, but I figured it might be easier than trying to sneak up to your cabin at this hour."

"This hour?" She asked, already pulling up her tool. The orange numbers glowed: 1003. Shit. She'd overslept, like massively overslept.

"You needed to sleep, Shepard. EDI and I covered for you." Garrus patted her shoulder. His hand was warm through his glove, and damn it when had she started noticing things like that? 

_ "Affirmative, Commander,"  _ EDI said over the speakers.  _ "Operative Lawson does not expect you for your briefing until 1300." _

Shepard let out a sigh that quickly turned into a yawn. She covered her mouth and watched as Garrus’ mandible flicked with his amusement. He stepped away, enough to give her room to hop down. 

“I’ll let you get changed,” he said on his way to the door. Garrus stopped in the frame to add: “The kettle should be just about done. You can grab a mug on the way to your cabin to find boots.”

He was gone before she could complain about the lack of appropriate footwear.

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps it should have been called the Perils of a Turian Boyfriend. 
> 
> <3


End file.
